Websites for tax practitioners.

• Author: Holub, Steven F.

The breadth and depth of information available on the Internet continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Much of that information is available only from proprietary databases, but a lot is free of charge. In either case, a tax practitioner can locate many interesting and useful Websites.

Tax and Accounting Websites

Tax and Accounting Sites Directory (www.taxsites.com). The Tax and Accounting Sites Directory is a comprehensive index to both tax and accounting Internet sites. It has little original material, but provides links to virtually all the important tax and accounting information resources on the Internet. The directory is one of the most complete general-purpose Websites. It is a valuable resource for tax practitioners as well as for accountants in public practice, industry, government and academia.

The site includes links to various Federal source documents, including several Code versions (although none appear to be completely current), regulations, court cases and other related documents.

The State & Local Tax link at this site lists state revenue department Websites, state court decisions and other state tax resources. The site includes printable copies of state tax forms (if available online).

A practitioner can search among well over 100 topics, ranging from bankruptcy to wash sales, to gambling, to adoption, to accounting issues. Unfortunately, the number of source documents found online for accounting and reporting issues does not rival those available for tax issues, but the site still has many useful links and examples of financial statements.

BenefitsLink (www.benefitslink.com). For a practice that involves employee benefit plans, either from a tax, administrative or auditing perspective, BenefitsLink is a large repository of useful resources. Each day, the site sends its subscribers e-mails with links to other Websites related to its daily newsletter topic. It does an amazingly good job of locating items posted online, whether by the government, professional firms or the popular press.

BenefitsLink also hosts Q&A columns and several Web-based discussion boards. Finally, the site maintains a library of links to other Internet resources, which include source documents for both ERISA and the Code.

AICPA Online (www.aicpa.org). The AICPA Website contains a lot of useful information, including all AICPA magazines and newsletters. The full text of the Journal of Accountancy. The CPA Letter and The Practicing CPA are available to all site visitors, whether or not they are AICPA members. Access to The Tax Adviser and InfoTech Update, however, are restricted to members of the AICPA Tax and Information Technology divisions, respectively.

The site contains copies of outstanding exposure drafts, minutes of various senior technical committees and...